Recently i downloaded the version 9 snapshot dated 5/4/11. I have a little bit of experience with a few different Linux versions of LXDE. I am not a coder. As a user i always try a few things to check out "user friendliness".
Installation was relatively uneventful after reading wiki's and forums. "PC-BSD Control Panel" functioned well. Apps and current Nvidia drivers installed via "App Cafe" work well and installed properly.
PCManFM does not mount or see optical disks or USB drives. The forums showed how to access these via terminal, but what's the point of a graphical file manager if it can't see files (also tried logged in as root)?
Selecting a file via "right click menu" crashes PCManFM. It is possible to select "Open", if logged in as root. But not "Open With", crashes.
Lastly, attempting to install .obt Openbox themes via, "Openbox Configuration Manager" produced the following errors.
-Unable to extract file
-Ensure /usr/home/tom/.themes is writable (right clicking and checking "permissions" says it is), and that file is a valid theme, it is.
Errors Reported:
tar: Option --wildcards not supported
Usage:
List tar: -tf <archive-filename>
Extract: tar -xf <archive-filename>
Create: tar -cf <archive-filename> [filenames...]
Help: tar --help

Xarchiver was installed via "App Cafe"

LXDE has potential. Together with -BSD it could be a really nice package.

First thing to remember is that LXDE is a very light-weight desktop, so
it may not have all the features / niceties that KDE / Gnome offers.

I'm going to take a look into the usb/optical notification though. I
think it's supposed to be using gvfs for notifications, but its not
working with them properly. Ditto with the right-click menus causing
crashes. Not sure if thats an upstream bug or porting issue yet.

For the open-box theme issue, I've just submitted a PR / Patch to the
maintainer, hopefully that gets put in soon, and it'll be fixed for the
next snapshot

Thanks for the quick response. Just upgraded to the latest (06072011) snapshot.
The theme problem is fixed. After the upgrade the Nvidia Current (270) driver was no longer active. System reverted to NV. Tried to re-install via system manager and got the following error,
"meta-pkg manager returned an error see /tmp/.pc-metapkgmanager.log".
Checked the log file it is empty. Tried different mirrors and display setup during boot up.
Also the installed version of PCManFM has a known bug. Users must go to /usr/home/"username"/.config/pcmanfm/ and delete the file pcmanfm.conf. If not, changes made to the desktop wallpaper will revert to the original after reboot. The correct file is in /usr/home/"username"/.config/pcmanfm/default/ and does not need to be altered. PCManFM still doesn't mount or recognize optical discs or USB drives. System boot times and overall performance definitely seem faster.

No go on the driver installation. Still get the same meta-pkg manager error.
Also, trying to refresh mirror list in "PC-BSD System Configuration" returns error message "Error Fetching Mirror List! Check your internet connection, or try again later." Tried to re-enter the custom mirror (ftp://mirrors.isc.org/pub/pcbsd) in the "Specify a custom Mirror" box, clicked "Save". When opening system configuration again, that box is empty and the "Select Mirror from list" selection is enabled.
Lastly "Online Update Notifier" returns "Failed to contact the update server!" error.

it may be another issue though. my browser would only go to a limited amount of sites, google and some others worked, but yahoo and a lot of others didn't, turned out i had to change the mtu to 1400 for my wireless interface

Was able to install Nvidia driver after correcting mirror entry. Checking for updates from "PC-BSD System Configuration" seems OK. But "Online Update Notifier" has returned the "Failed to contact the update server!" in this and the last snapshot.
Can live with that for now. Moving on to getting sound working.

Figured out how to get sound working. Had to go to "Service Manager" in "PCBSD Control Panel" and manually start "snddetect". Just tried this on my own. Googled and searched any forum that had to do with LXDE or BSD. One said to disable snddetect. Did that. Still no sound. Re-enabled and started service. Now have sound via "snd_ich". Is this something that can be done automatically during setup? Sound remained functional after reboot.

Below are listed items from the diagnostic sheet created by system manager concerning sound. This was generated before a solution was found. Was going to post the entire sheet but it is 600 lines long. Hope this helps.